36 world-changing travel moments

By Qin Xie, for CNN and CNN Staff

Updated 1803 GMT (0203 HKT) April 4, 2014

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1903: First powered flight – In 1903, Orville Wright, aided by his brother Wilbur, flew the first sustained powered flight -- lasting 120 feet. Since then we've witnessed supersonic flight, moon landings, online booking and camera-phone technology. Click through the gallery here and see the article below for more seminal moments in travel history.

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1911: Roads marked for first time – Edward N. Hines from Michigan thought it'd be a good idea to mark roads to separate traffic. Hines was a member of the Wayne County Road Commission at the time. So in 1911, River Road in Wayne County became the first road in the world to be marked.

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1912: Titanic sinks – Few things achieve iconic status like that of RMS Titanic. Its sinking on April 15, 1912, has echoed down the decades. Here a man looks on in what is believed to be the last picture taken of the ship as it leaves Queenstown, now known as Cobh, in Ireland.

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1927: First solo, nonstop trans-Atlantic flight – American aviator Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo trans-Atlantic nonstop flight on May 20-21, after flying for 33.5 hours. A typical New York to Paris flight today takes around eight hours.

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1937: Hindenberg disaster – The Hindenberg crash in New Jersey in 1937, which killed 36 people, effectively ended the era of zeppelin aviation. The Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Company recently launched a new model, using nonflammable helium instead of hydrogen.

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1949: Crash test dummy born – The first crash test dummy was the Sierra Sam, created in 1949 to test ejection seats on aircraft. Over the years, the crash test dummy has been refined to be more human-like in shape, size and weight.

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1967: ATM unveiled – Rarely do three letters conjure such relief in the minds of hungry, homesick travelers. The world's first ATM was unveiled in 1967 at Barclays Bank in Enfield, London. The machine was created by John Shepherd Barron, who headed up the invention team at De La Rue Instruments, and worked by cashing radioactive checks.

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1969: First Concorde flight – Elegant, fast, luxurious -- Concorde is one of only two supersonic planes to have entered commercial service (the other being the Tupolev Tu-144). Its retirement in November 2003 was seen by many as a backward step in air travel.

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1970: Someone (finally) puts wheels on a bag – It's hard to imagine that the wheeled suitcase didn't exist 50 years ago. When Bernard Sadow invented his wheeled suitcase in 1970, he had trouble selling it to the luggage industry. It was thought that people wouldn't want to pull their suitcases behind them. Nice call, luggage experts.

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1973: First handheld mobile phone – It was a little more than forty years ago that a call was made from the first handheld mobile phone by its creator, Martin Cooper. Now, it's rare not to be constantly interrupted by the bleeps and vibrations of this pocket-sized computer.

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1974: GPS hits the road – When you're lost on the back roads of a small town and your GPS comes to the rescue, think of Roger L. Easton. He worked with a team at Naval Air Systems Command in the United States to develop and track satellites in space. His work ultimately led to the invention of GPS, for which the patent was awarded in 1974.

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1975: Launch of digital cameras – Invented by Kodak engineer Steve Sasson in 1975, the first digital camera used a lens from a movie camera and a digital cassette recorder as a memory card, but it paved the way for all of us who click and snap our way through our vacations today.

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1990s: Birth of online booking engines – Power shifted into the hands of travel consumers in the 1990s, when Expedia, Priceline and a raft of other public access booking engines were born. Travel agents no longer held the only keys to the hotel and airline reservation channels, leading others, such as Tripadvisor, to become the influential market leaders they are today.

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2001: A space tourist – In 2001, U.S. rich guy Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist. His six-day trip rotating the Earth reportedly cost $20 million. While the expense still prevents the majority of us from taking a vacation to space, at least it's a possibility.

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2012: Boeing Dreamliner launched – The 787 had a record number of pre-orders when it was announced with nearly 800 planes due for delivery. A series of problems, mostly involving the plane's battery system, saw the whole fleet grounded for a short period in 2013. It's technological advances may yet prove revolutionary.

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Story highlights

The idea to mark road surfaces reportedly came from watching a milk truck drip milk on the road

U.S. airline passengers increased by 3,000% in two years following Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic

Nil Bohlin's invention of the three-point seat belt is estimated to have saved more than a million lives

Several companies are in the process of bringing back supersonic flights

Just more than a hundred and ten years ago, Orville Wright became the first human to achieve powered flight.

On a calm, December 1903 day, helped by his brother Wilbur, Orville successfully launched their flying machine, maneuvered it through the air for 120 feet, and landed it safely.

Later that same day they achieved another flight of 852 feet in 59 seconds, to start the modern air travel era.

Since then numerous inventions, discoveries and milestones have been made.

Here are a few of our favorites.

Have we missed your top travel moment? Tell us about it in the comments section.

1903: First powered flight

Flying isn't the tricky part we're told -- landing is.

But until December 17, 1903, it was all a bit of a dream.

Then, with a design based on a glider kite, the Wright brothers successfully piloted a powered aircraft for 12 seconds for the first time, and (important!) landed it safely.

Few events have echoed through the decades like the sinking of RMS Titanic.

The Titanic's sinking is the best documented maritime disaster of all time.

Back then, people around the world mourned the deaths of 1,500 after this state of the art, supposedly "unsinkable" luxury liner struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York.

The sinking also sparked panic among transatlantic cruise travelers and prompted improvements in maritime safety measures.

An unknown 25-year-old U.S. Air Mail pilot flew into the record books on May 21, 1927, by becoming the first pilot to successfully make the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

Charles Lindbergh was after a $25,000 prize -- six well-known pilots had perished in their attempts to claim it before Lindbergh pulled it off.

When the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg airship burst into flames and crashed to the ground in New Jersey in 1937, killing 36 people, the era of intercontinental zeppelin travel came to a horrifying end.

Though the crash of the Hindenburg wasn't the worst airship disaster in history, the shocking newsreels and chilling live radio commentary -- "Oh, the humanity!" -- broadcast around the world shattered public confidence in airship travel.

Could a plane, or a person, withstand the pressure of exceeding the speed of sound?

That was the question for the United States Air Force in the mid-20th century.

Selected by the Air Force Flight Performance School to provide the answer, Chuck Yeager became the most famous test pilot in U.S. history when he hid two broken ribs (he'd been thrown from a horse two days before his flight) and flew a bullet-shaped, rocket-powered plane faster than the speed of sound (767 miles per hour) on October 14, 1947.

It may have been Americans who flew the first aircraft (Wright brothers, 1903) and the first commercial flight (a 23-minute flight between Tampa and St. Petersburg in Florida in 1914), but the Brits launched the first commercial jetliner service in the world -- the closest thing to today's air travel.

In 1952, the de Havilland Aircraft Company debuted the first commercial jetliner flight -- on a plane called the de Havilland Comet -- between London and Johannesburg, a trip that took 23 hours.

The jet shortened the London-New York flight from 18 to 12 hours.

Due to a series of accidents after its initial success, the Comet's fleet was grounded in 1954 and the jet was redesigned, including replacing the square windows and panels with the rounded versions we see today.

If the trauma of forgetting your PIN or losing your debit card makes you question the benefits of the ATM, consider what this process used to involve: walking around with pieces of radioactive paper in your pocket.

The world's first ATM was unveiled in 1967 at Barclays Bank in Enfield, London.

Created by John Shepherd Barron, who headed the invention team at De La Rue Instruments, the original machine was initiated when it detected radioactive isotope carbon 14 on a check.

Thankfully, we've moved on to the card and PIN system, giving travelers easy access to their cash in hundreds of countries.

Broke but happily married young hippie couple Tony and Maureen Wheeler created what became the world's most successful travel guides when they published their accounts of how to travel across Asia on a shoestring in 1972.

Their books, most popular with backpackers, recommend handfuls of places across the world and have often been the source of intense competition among hostel owners, to the extent that it has occasionally proved problematic to travelers.

One unconfirmed report from India illustrates: when Lonely Planet gave a positive review to a hostel named "Green's Hotel," several other hotels on the street renamed themselves "Green's Hotel."

Then, in the early 1970s, a spate of "skyjackings" occurred, triggering a chain of events that led to the modern airline security we experience today.

The first reported plane hijacking can be traced to Peru in the 1930s.

But it was a Southern Airways hijacking, in which hijackers threatened to crash into a nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in the United States in November 1972, that prompted authorities to finally install strong counter measures.

Hair tongs, cameras, laptops, phones -- most travelers will have found themselves desperately in need of using one of these in a foreign hotel, only to find it's powered out and the plug won't fit the wall.

There are 12 significant electrical plug shapes in use around the world and until Swiss company SKROSS invented its world adapter, the chances were your new home for a few days didn't have sockets that fit.

Said to have revolutionized jetliner design and brought commercial aeronautics into the 21st century, the 787 had a record number of pre-orders when it was announced with nearly 800 planes due for delivery.

Its composite fuselage makes it lighter and therefore cheaper to fuel and its bigger windows and extra space inside make it more comfortable.

A series of problems, mostly involving the plane's battery system, saw the whole fleet grounded for a short period in 2013.

The aircraft's advances may yet prove to be revolutionary, though it remains to be seen if the plane will show up when lists such this one are updated in five, 10 or even 100 years.